Who Pays for Abandoned Mine Clean Up Cost

State officials say Oregon's rich mining past is posing serious risks to the environment and exposing humans to toxic mine waste.

But most agree the biggest problem with abandoned mines across the country, finding the money to clean them up.

These mines are abandoned so many of the companies responsible for the contamination are nowhere to be found.

Experts say these mines need to get cleaned up but deciding who should pay for it gets complicated.

Some say now the costs are falling on some unsuspecting, property owners.

Barbara Smith is one.

She says after a lifetime she's lost everything she's worked for.

"All that sacrifice and everything we did was just for nothing," she says.

The 79-year-old grandmother says she and her husband worked their whole lives to retire and buy property in Southern Oregon.

Now she says the state is trying to take that property because they got hit with an abandoned mine clean up bill.

"We suffered and went without so we could get the property and hang onto it and everything and now I have nothing... they'll just take the property," she says.

The Smith's dream centered around a property on the forgotten Bonanza Mine Site.

The mine was once the nations second largest producer of mercury.

Now it's just one of many abandoned mines across the country and in Oregon contaminating surrounding land.

Greg Aitken with the department of environmental quality says these mines are dangerous to both the environment and in some cases human health.

"The problem is that its abandoned," he says. "The owners, the operators, the people responsible are long gone as far as we can tell."

That's why smith says she got stuck with the clean up bill and she doesn't think it's right.

A copy of the lien the DEQ has against Smith says she owes the state more than $300,000 dollars for cleaning up the mercury contaminating her property.

But Smith says she shouldn't be responsible for a mess she didn't make.

The lien goes onto say that Smith is responsible under Oregon Revised statutes 465.

So who's right?

We asked Chris Hearn, a lawyer in Ashland, what he thinks.

Hearn says based on what Smith says and the letters the DEQ sent Smith, he doesn't agree with the DEQ's interpretation of the law.

"If the person doesn't have any knowledge, didn't have any reason to know that there were contaminants, and is basically an innocent party, there is not a legal basis that I can find to charge them with the clean up under Oregon statute," he says.

But DEQ officials say the Smith's did know they were buying an abandoned mine, so they should have known it would be contaminated.

Smith says she didn't*know and now she says she's forced to spend her life savings cleaning up the contamination.

"I don't understand how they could do that to you when you've worked for something for years and years so you can have something to pass to your kids. But they say no we're taking it," she says.

And she says it's not just her property the state's claiming, its her dreams for her kids, and their kids.

The state has liens against several other old mining properties in Oregon worth more than a couple hundred thousand dollars each.

Lawyers say there are a lot of other toxic waste problems that are contaminating land all across the country. Such as underground fuel tanks and nuclear waste sites.